Influencer marketing has grown tremendously over the last couple of years, mainly due to the exponential growth of social media platforms. These social media platforms allow a message to be delivered to thousands of followers of an influencer at once.
Partnering with social media influencers is now a part of many companies marketing strategy in reaching out to their target audience, which before was more difficult to do.
According to a 2019 statistics, over the past three years, Google searches for the keyword “influencer marketing” grew by 1,500%. It is also predicted that by 2020, influencer marketing will become a $10 billion industry.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Do you know that influencer marketing is considered the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition channel? This is according to a survey conducted by Influencer Marketing Hub. They reported that 28% of the companies they surveyed think of influencer marketing as the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition channel. This statistic actually leaves behind organic search, paid search, and email marketing.
Influencer marketing utilizes the power of so-called influencers or people who have a large number of followers to market a brand, business, product or service. On social media, several people have thousands or millions of followers, which is why they’re known as influencers.
These influencers have sway over a large number of consumers, and people tend to trust their opinion. For example, a person is more likely to buy a weight loss product if it’s recommended by a well-known health and fitness blogger who has thousands of followers over social media.
A marketer uses influencers to promote their products to the target audience instead of targeting the audience directly. You may hire/inspire or pay the influencers to get out the word for you.
According to statistics, 93% of influencer marketing campaigns utilize Instagram.
How to create an Influencer Marketing Strategy
To benefit from influencer marketing, you need to create a well-researched influencer marketing strategy which will align with the goals of your overall digital marketing campaign. Here are some tips on how you can do it:
- You need to have a clear idea of what your campaign goals are before starting an influencer marketing campaign. You may use influencers in your niche for increasing brand awareness, get new followers, increase your revenue, or may opt for a long-term strategy where the influencer will be your brand ambassador.
- You need to research about the influencers in your industry and identify the right influencers for your campaign. Be careful to study the type of followers your influencers have, their engagement rate demographics of their followers, and their reputation in the industry.
- Measure the success of your influencer marketing campaign using analytics tools available to marketers. Instagram has a paid partnership feature which allows influencers to disclose that they have a dedicated partnership with a business each time they publish sponsored content. Instagram also allows companies to track various metrics such as reach, taps forward, taps backward, exits, replies, and more for stories.
In partnering with social media influencers, it is important to make sure that the influencer is not also promoting other competing brands. You should specifically include this in your agreement to avoid future complications.
Conclusion
You can exponentially increase the reach of your marketing campaigns by tapping into the networks of influencers within your domain, and this can also lead to a boost in your revenue and profitability.
Influencer marketing is slowly coming of age, and more and more brands are taking note of this evolutionary way of marketing to their target audience. But, do you know that 67.6% of marketers consider finding relevant influencers the most challenging part of running an influencer marketing campaign? For this reason, it’s important that if you don’t have a background in the digital marketing world, you should consider getting the help of experts as part of your plan.
If you haven’t tried influencer marketing yet and wanted to find out more about it, the Influencer Marketing & Experts at KISS PR can help you. They can assess the specific needs of your company and can help you decide if influencer marketing is the best strategy to promote your business. Call them at 972-437-8942 or fill out this contact form to schedule an appointment.
